After years of nomadic temporary employment, advanced degrees, and chocolate ice cream, a rugger with a love of knitting and a cyclist with no domestic skills signed a Ketubah and bought a house in Pittsburgh.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ice Cream, Take 2

Corey and I haven't cleaned out house in months as we've been drenched in schoolwork, so the impending visit of our families for graduation forced us into a cleaning frenzy. It was 75 degrees out even after dark last night, so I needed refreshment. I made us take a break in the 830pm heat to go for soft serve.

The soft serve place overlooking the Allegheny River has been taken over by some zoo-type dorks. It's now called Zebra cream or something. I stared at the menu for a really long time, unable to figure out how to order a regular twist cone. "Corey," I said, "I want swirled chocolate and vanilla soft serve on a cone. That doesn't look like any of the choices. What do I do?"

He remained calm as always. He told me to describe what I wanted, and that it would be ok. I feared they would give me scooped ice cream, but took Corey's word for it. When I did that, a little boy in a visor picturing a smiling zebra said, "Do you want the regular or the Junior Explorer?"

"Corey, what do I want? Tell him to make my ice cream how I want it." I was despairing and stopped wanting to deal with the zebra people or their code words and mysterious fudge brownie placement inside the cones. Corey emerged victorious with my cone a little later and I settled myself on a bench to watch a cute family.

There was a three year old boy with a mohawk, his tattooed dad, and Dom Costa. The Dad was telling Dom that the little boy was only allowed to throw rocks at bodies of water, even if they are camping. He, the dad, has seen too many accidents with rock throwing. "Only in the water!!!" he kept bellowing.

Dom Costa said, "That's a pretty smart rule. I like it." And he and his wife took off. The tattooed dad tried to get the little boy to agree to leave the Zebra cream place, too, since they were closing. But the mohawk kid kept throwing rocks at the river and smearing ice cream all over his face. I think he had the Junior Explorer.

Finally the dad had enough. He leaned over to the kid and said, "What do you want to do? Go out to the clubs? You're three years old. You gotta go to bed, dude." Everyone saw the reason in this statement and we all cleared out. And that's exactly what I did when I got home, too.